The Impact Of Ragaku On Modern Japanese Science And Its Role In The Process Of Japanese Modernization

Based on the experiential hypothesis that knowledge tradition is the impetus and core of modernization, the thesis dissertates on the role Ragaku plays when reconstructing Japan's traditional knowledge and forming a new knowledge tradition. The way in which Ragaku reconstructs Japan's traditional knowledge is illustrated in three closely-related aspects: the broadcasting of modern science knowledge, the introduction of experiential positivism and the cultivation of an academic tradition where knowledge is for its own sake. The method that modern empirical science emphasizes and reinforces, experiential positivism became the first modern scientific method spread into Japan in the Baconian science system of Ragaku. In contrast to the truth-upheld constructing method advocated by astronomy, Ragaku which centres on iatrology brought about the concept of experience in the modern sense and established the indispensable effect the concept of positivism could bring to the recognition of knowledge. To those countries slowering in modernization, the fact that Baconian science exceeds mathematical science in development might be advantageous in the formation of modern scientific views for one reason that the independence of knowledge and moralization caused by the two concepts make possible in the Japanese society the emergence of an academic tradition where knowledge is for its own sake. Still because of the experiential features of the Baconian science system, the new academic tradition is not characterised by scholasticism but supplies Japanese modernization with knowledge, ideas and human resources.